The theme of this issue is worker cooperative replication. It addresses an issue which is central to the growth of the democratic worker cooperative movement. How do we reproduce the success stories we have already achieved? That is, how do we replicate successful worker cooperatives in different locations? Inherent in the challenge of replication is a long standing conundrum of worker cooperative development. Replication is analogous to "franchising" in a capitalist company. Capitalist companies have a compelling motive to replicate successful stores - maximizing profit. What motive does a successful worker cooperatives have for replicating itself?

By Jim Johnson, GEO Collective

Since its founding in 2000, worker-managed non-profit Free Geek of Portland, Oregon, has supplied over 15,000 refurbished computers to individuals and community organizations, and has also ethically recycled 2,000 tons of non-reusable computer components (known as "e-waste"). Along the way, they've also successfully reproduced their organizational model, with nine similar organizations having taken root in the US and Canada. But they've also encountered some special challenges in propagating their model, and their experience offers some important cautionary tales for co-ops and collectives seeking to do the same.

By Joe Marraffino, Arizmendi Development and Support Cooperative

Since the mid-1990s a group of worker cooperative organizers in the San Francisco Bay Area has been developing a new model for cooperative development.  Our organization, the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, is a network, incubator, and technical assistance provider that is owned, governed, and funded by the member workplaces it creates and serves.  Our primary activity is to replicate and offer continuing support to new retail bakeries based on a proven cooperative business model.   

By Joel Schoening

By Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo, GEO

For worker cooperatives to be effective, member-owners should look at power relationships within and peform a "critical self-examination" of themselves and their co-op. That was one of the suggestions of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond to worker-owners at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives at the third biennial conference in New Orleans.